Of
course Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy), the business woman who becomes a
felon who starts what really looks like a racket involving a group of young
girls and baked goods, is a wounded soul. Obviously she can't help being a
misanthrope and malcontent, because she had a difficult youth, and that has made
her into the unapologetically disinterested and spiteful woman that she is
today.

By now,
we've seen this shtick so many times from McCarthy that it's becoming
increasingly tough to remember that she can be really funny when she's hurling
insults or being a grouch, and she can also be genuinely affecting when
necessary, too. The Boss, her latest starring vehicle, once again gives her the
insults, the bad attitude, and the sudden change of heart, and the whole routine
feels stale.

It
doesn't help that the movie itself seems to have been cobbled together from the
rough outline of a plot and some on-set improvisation sessions by the cast. The
movie clunks along, never seeming certain of where it's going but convinced that
it will get somewhere. The climax features a swordfight between McCarthy and
Peter Dinklage that occasionally turns into something resembling foreplay. Yes,
the movie gets somewhere, all right.

Michelle
begins the movie as a famous entrepreneur, the CEO of three large corporations,
a best-selling author, and the 47th wealthiest woman in the world. Technically,
she begins as an orphan, who's adopted and returned to the Catholic orphanage
three times during her childhood because the parents don't think it's a
"good match."

Character
actress Margo Martindale plays the nun in charge of the place, and she has maybe
two lines of dialogue. It's a surprise that she doesn't turn up again in any
capacity, although perhaps her additional scenes were cut. That, of course,
brings up the depressing thought that there were cuts made to material that
either didn't work or fit into the movie. It's depressing because, if it's true,
it means that what we see in the movie is the best, possible material with which
director Ben Falcone had to work.

Michelle
gets into legal trouble when her corporate rival/former lover Renault (Dinklage),
as a way to get back at her for beating him to a deal, tips off the Securities
and Exchange Commission to her insider trading. When she gets out of prison four
months later, her assets have been seized by the government. Since she has lived
a life of distancing herself from other people, she ends up staying with her
former assistant Claire (Kristen Bell), a single mother raising her daughter
Rachel (Ella Anderson).

The
plot of McCarthy, Falcone, and Steve Mallory's screenplay involves Michelle
planning her comeback by organizing a rival scout troop for girls to sell
Claire's brownies (One of the movie's few chuckles involves her design of the
logo and uniforms, which look like designs from a Soviet youth group). The girls
get a commission, and another percentage of sales will go to a college fund for
them. The movie skirts around where the majority of the money goes, because,
well, it would make Michelle's business practices look even shadier than we
already know them to be.

The
jokes involve Michelle abusing adults and children alike. A group of former
business partners dismiss her appeal for some help for obvious reasons, so she
takes to insulting one man's wife, who just died. That scene ends with McCarthy
taking a tumble down a flight of stairs. She takes especial pleasure from
throwing barbs at the daughter of a scout volunteer, who gets it worse for
daring to think that it might be a bad idea to have a convicted felon run a
business that depends on child labor. That conflict climaxes with a massive
brawl in the street, during which Michelle clotheslines the girl in question.
There's an early scene involving teeth whitening that incorrectly supposes the
sight of McCarthy's teeth and gums will be funny, and at another point, she's
catapulted into a wall by a sofa bed, because random physical comedy seems to be
the movie's go-to mode whenever a scene or plotline seems to be out of juice.

That
happens often and, lest one forgets the swordplay/foreplay that resolves the
movie, as a whole. In case one also happens to forget the opening bit with the
orphanage, The Boss is also a movie that wants us to delight in the despicable
behavior of the lead character, only to make excuses for her that undermine the
entire point.